


Ascent Into Madness

by gloria_scott



Category: Princess Bride (1987)
Genre: Extra Treat, Gen, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 16:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12535732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloria_scott/pseuds/gloria_scott
Summary: The Cliffs of Insanity have finally met their match(es).





	Ascent Into Madness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hearteating](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearteating/gifts).



> I apologize to any Sicilians who may be reading.

They come to the foot of the Cliffs of Insanity by raft or boat. Few in number over an expanse of millennia, but they come. The greedy, the hateful, the desperate; some well prepared and provisioned, others not. No matter. Their fate is all the same. They climb, driven by whatever brought them to the brink of madness. The wind whispers to them, a sweet, compelling singsong:

“Look down! Let go! Look down! Let go!”

It grows ever louder with each furlong they climb until the song is all they hear or know. Forgotten is the quest that brought them to this place. They succumb then, every one of them. The ascent into madness is slow but sure, the journey complete as they plummet to their end upon the broken, jumbled rocks below.

***

The Giant grabs hold of the rope and begins his ascent more steadily than any of the unhappy climbers who came before, even burdened as he is with the other three. Perhaps this one is too thick to understand his precarious situation. The wind whispers, then howls, in the deep cracks and crevasses.

“Look down! Let go!”

The Giant hears the song but simply hums along. The Princess hears as well, but the ropes binding her wrists save her. The Spaniard is too consumed with thoughts of revenge and too confident in his friend's strength to heed the call. And the Sicilian is, well, Sicilian. Madness is a given.

The Giant's pace quickens and he reaches the safety of the clifftop – the first to do so since the seas receded and exposed this madness to the world.

***

The Man in Black ascends the rope faster even than the Giant, until it is cut. Then only bloody fists and bloodier determination serve to haul his body ever upward. He is already seized by a madness much more dangerous than the Cliffs offer. If fear is the ice that encases and freezes the heart, love is a fire that burns the blood, setting heart and mind aflame. And this one burns brighter and more fiercely than any other.

For a moment – a single moment – the song finds a chink in his well-trained and hardened defenses. He waivers, slips, looks down.

“You'll not take me,” he mutters under quickening breath. “My quest is most noble and shall not be thwarted.”

He regains his footing. The wind dies down. So many more trials lie ahead; this one will surely succumb to one of them. Or else love's fire will diminish him to ash.


End file.
